The New Mexico attorney who defended teenage killer Cody Posey during his murder trial doesn't think much of Jack Thompson's latest video game lawsuit.

Gary Mitchell's skillful defense efforts kept Posey out of the adult prison system for killing his abusive father and stepmother as well as his stepsister in 2004. The lawyer told the Albuquerque Journal that anti-game activist Thompson had contacted him "numerous times" before the criminal trial, urging Mitchell to employ a Grand Theft Auto defense.

"I just didn't find it had any merit whatsoever," Mitchell said. The attorney is seen in the photo at left, conferring with Cody Posey.

According to the newspaper report, Thompson was encouraged to pursue a lawsuit against the video game industry by prosecutor Sandra Grisham.

That seems a bit odd on a couple of scores. First, during the trial, Grisham downplayed any mitigation of the crime based on the horrible physical and sexual abuse that Cody Posey suffered at the hands of his father and stepmother. In fact, Grisham's tough-as-nails approach sparked a fair amount of outrage in certain quarters. If she wouldn't agree that such egregious child abuse might be a causal factor, why would she think that video games might be?

The newspaper does not specify what level of involvement Grisham might have had, nor does Grisham confirm urging a lawsuit in the story. However, the Albuquerque Tribune reports that Cody's uncle, Verlin Posey asked the prosecutor about filing suit and Grisham contacted Thompson at that point.

Grisham did apparently raise the video game issue at one point during the trial proceedings, eliciting from Cody that he had played GTA as well as Tom Clancy's Shadow Ops.

(so... why isn't Ubisoft a defendant?)

Plaintiffs in the suit are Verlin Posey, brother of Cody's slain father Delbert Posey and Pat Basham, father of Cody's stepmother and grandfather of Cody's stepsister. It's interesting to note that Verlin Posey told Court TV that he was aware to some extent of the abuse Cody received at the hands of the deceased:

"My brother was trying to raise a man out of a boy that was admittedly skipping school and smoking dope and being a juvenile delinquent at times... I'm sure at times he probably crossed the line... Not only did he get spankings with a board or a belt... at times, he had to do push-ups because the spankings weren't working. When I saw him cross the line, instead of getting five swats he may gave given him seven or eight. When we get to the fine line of corporal punishment and abuse, it's all about opinion."

Other witnessed testified that Delbert Posey crushed Cody's fingers with a pair of pliers and held a hay hook to his groin. Cody told the court that on the night before the murders his father tried to make him have sex with his stepmother and burned him with a heated metal rod when he refused.

For his part Jack Thompson told the newspaper, "Our goal is to punish (the defendants) so severely that they will stop marketing this game to kids. They market them for kids; they assure parents as well as kids through various lobbyists that games are not harmful to kids. That is not true."

Plaintiff Basham said he was not interested in financial gain, but in saving other families.

"If we can get this game off the market, this kind of thing won't happen to other people like happened to us," he said.

I have read comments on this latest negative development that good ole Vicious Verin s**ts out. People like him always find others like Thompson to join up for eveil doings. But my main concern is for Cody and how he is handling this latest effort by Vicious Verlin and his pea brain family trying to continue to give pain to Cody. Revenge for Verlin eats up his nights and days and allows him to "survive". But sooner or later he will be eaten up by his own hands from evil and his pea brain will be a total vacuum, that is why he is into this hair brain venture. I only hope that the staff at Sequoyah has given Cody coping skills to absorb this kind of ugly event as a passing incident. I pray that is will not be allowed to go into a trial as ole Verlin will "enjoy" dragging Cody into the public eye again as his form of torture, sure is following his bothers footsteps!

My other concer is whether Mr. Mitchell, Cody's trial attorney, provided an ironclad legal setup on Cody's Trust Fund that many of us have contribute. I do wonder if Cody's future needs are in Jeopardy? For a fluke if this evil challenge succeeds, Verlin may feel nutty enough to file for Cody's Trust Fund as compensation for the death of Delbert (Verlin's lost of his brother's companionship, LOL!!!) . Many of us considers ourselves as Cody's Foster Mothers and we'll be darn if Vicious Verlin, S**ts Shandra or any other pea brain members will get their filty hands on Cody's future!!!!

Thank You Sherry for your comments. I figured it was Paul's game and Paul's playstation. I'm sure Cody played the game in between getting
abused,working long hrs on the ranch with no pay,and being sent to his room all the time. The parents Paul and Tryone were the people in Cody's life that taught him violence. When you make your son shoot his dog because he had a broken leg and Cody wanted to pay to have the dog
brought to the vet. The father stood over him and made him shoot his dog.
They don't teach this type of violence on the video game in question.
Verlin and his family need to face their own demons and stop blaming everyone else but themselves for the troubles in their life.Get a job and make a living like everyone else instead of trying to cash in at a young boy's expense.

Dutch, while I do respect your concerns about how manipulative Jack is, I cannot fathom how one person like him is going to "destroy" the game industry. To me, he is nothing but a paper tiger who only gets exposure from local media.

Plus, why are people so concerned about a more charismatic and intelligent "Thompson" that will rise up after the old Thompson fades away into obscurity for whatever reason? Our generation grew up with games and we will more than likely fight against the archaic, backwards thinking that these anti-gamers propose.

There isn't a no-game Totalitarian utopia over the horizon. Not ever. Jack may be more intelligent than he looks but his side of the table is always being shut down by the courts for being unconstitutional. Freedom of expression and speech will always prevail in the cases of entertainment mediums and for that, I really have nothing to worry about.

By the way, this Posey character has my 1st name so I am a little partial to this issue.

PyroHazard, it is possible that Jack is trying to win the battle of public opinion rather than actual court cases. If he keeps this issue in the public eye and keeps repeating lies like "murder simulator", the public picks up on it. He won't destroy the game industry, but he could force them to change their practices through public pressure.

In the long run, yes, the anti-game movement will lose as that generation dies out and is replaced by younger generations. Between now and then, though, we could face a time where games become overly sanitized like comics were from the 50s to the 70s.

Well, if he is trying to sway public opinion, good fucking luck because most people I have conversated with who are not involved in the gaming community do not know who Thompson is. Besides, sanitation only occurs if game developers buckle into political pressure and unfortunately, that seems to be the case right now.

I am still optimistic about this though. Perhaps as of present, we need to gather up and build a public figure that counteracts Wacko Jacko's claims.

@grey_poet
D&D seemed to have escaped with nothing more than a culture stigma (one that seems to have faded) and rap music calmed down for a bit and now its just about back where it was. Both were scrutinized in about the same way.

Worst case scenario is what comics had to put up with back then. Also when the generation dies out and the scrutiny of our media genre is gone, our generation needs to not make the same mistake with the next big thing.

Now if all this legislation stuff happened back in the days of the original Mortal Kombat, we'd be rather powerless to stop it. But we grew up and there are enough of us to affect a vote, thing is we need to rally ourselves and utalize our other rights. Our right to Petition and Protest in a peaceful manner. So far we've been sitting as not so silent bystanders watching the industry strike stuff down for us, but they can't do it forever with guys like Thompson running around. So we have to be a little more involved if we want to get our point across.

Michael,
More than contridictory, he admitted in the interview he saw NO signs that Cody was capable of killing his father, let alone others. He said Cody was a liar and sneaky (even as a baby which is... well, silly).
Now, all of a sudden, he recognizes that Cody could have been a killer because he played GTA "obsessively" for months? What? Did that just suddenly pop up in his head? If he truly believes that violent video games would make Cody a killer, then he should have been saying so from day 1. Not just suddenly a "Oh my gosh! Of course! Why didn't I see it before?" kind of thing.

No, he doesn't believe, Truly believe, for a microsecond that GTA is to blame. Or any violent video game for that matter.

No, this is further evidence of John Bruce abusing people and the community and the law just to push his agenda upon people.

Good God, this kid’s been through a lot. How can someone blame this horrible tragedy on a video game and sleep at night?
Because he's Jack Thompson! Gamers like you and I are limited by our fried vestigial lobes and as a result, we get distracted by things like "common sense" and "cause and effect". Jack Thompson, however, can see through such trivial matters like child abuse to the real culprit! These amazing abilities of his are how he knows things like how video games made Robida a killer, even after police failed to find any video games at Robida's house! We mere mortals, blinded by "facts" and "substantial proof" should not question him.

” When you make your son shoot his dog because he had a broken leg and Cody wanted to pay to have the dog
brought to the vet. The father stood over him and made him shoot his dog.”

That's just . . . cruel and unnecesary. What the hell is that supposed to teach him? That a dog with a broken leg is worthless? That his pet is not worth the money to bring him to a vet? My god I never knew that guy's dad was such a jackass. It reminds me of a song.

He had it coming
He had it coming
He only had himself to blame
If you had been there, if you had seen it
I bet'cha you would have done the same.

@ King Nintendoid
No, the father is dead. I'm going to assume you thought Verlin was Cody's father. Verlin is Cody's uncle. His only crimes are turning a blind eye and trying to defend, even glorify, his brother's abhorrent behavior.

Next, how the hell is GTA going to train anyone? It has autoaim! What, is someone going to learn that headshots are more fatal than a bullet in the torso? Hell, I learned that in elementary school science. Head wounds aren't good.

Finally, as anyone who has ever held a firearm can tell you, there is a vast difference between the shape of a rifle and the shape of a controller.

I have a question to ask what game system and video game trained Linda Posey the Mother of Verlin and Paul Posey and Cody's grandmother to shoot and kill her husband Verlin and Paul's dad while he was sleeping and then kill herself because I don't want my grandkids to play that game?How stupid to say a video game trained Cody to shoot when it was proved in court what a child abuser Paul Posey was, the jury believed the abuse when Cody was only charged with manslaughter for Paul. Verlin you need to get a life and a job to go with it, your brother and Tyrone put the gun in Cody's hand and they got just exactly what they deserved!I donate to Cody's trust fund and I will do anything I can to help himand to try and make up to him what he lost in life because of Paul Posey.

To be honest, I think some legislations that want to keep violent M rated games away from kids is a good thing. But i agree with everyone here, Jack is doing it for publicity and to get games out of everywhere for good. I watched the G4 loop video and he sounded dumb (i hate adam sessler, but he did pwn JT). What JT wants is to have games come to him first then he can say if its good enough for the american people. Who the fuck does he think he is?

He doesn't get to say whats wrong and right, we do. And now here comes another case about a child playing violent video games and wanting to kill his parents. Its wrong, very very wrong. JT has no idea whats going on. They can throw everything in his face about abuse towards the kid to incest, and he'll still turn a blind eye to it and stick to his "GTA made him do it" case.

GTA doesn't do anything, doom doesn't do anything, and games don't do anything at all but give us hours of entertainment for when we're bored and can't go play outside sports, or can't. I have asthma, i can barely run anymore cause i can get an attack and die from lack of air, thus i play more video games (i don't like sports games though, its ironic i know). Then you have RolePlaying Games, you know what they do? They immerse the player into a fantasy/parallel universe where you take the roll of a hero to save a said universe.

So lets bring up back in the 1980s about Dungeons and Dragons. The church tried suing TSR cause Dungeons and Dragons made kids go insane and kill people, but in all actuallity it made kids get with their friends and play to save a world, or princess, or do something that they can't do (like cast magic missle at the darkness) Its a wash, rinse and repeat here.

Now we have a kid who felt that he had to end this all once and for all. Did he do it wrong, perhaps. But what if he went to the government, and they came up to see what happened and the parents smiled all nice and said "nothing wrong here" and the government believed them, that kid would of been beaten to the very inch of his life for doing that. We don't know what was going on through the kid's mind, we're not psychics here, we don't if he wanted to sit there and just take it, kill himself, or do something. But he did do something, and now the bastards that damaged him mentally is dead. Good, they deserved it.

To wrap things up, JT is just wanting more publicity to rabble his word, to say that games are evil and that anyone who thinks about video games are the antichrist/ evil hitler loving people. (hitler could of been a good person if he didn't genocide everyone) Now he sits here and says to the family "hey, these game companies hate you and your family and want you dead, look at their games, you should sue them" Thus he gets more people for his crusade of stupidity and the stupid rednecks get money cause there misfit kid killed people cause of a game, not cause of the obvious things cockslapping them in the face.

JT is suing the companies on behalf of the families, yet JT owns stock in one of the companies in question. Therefore it appears it would be in JT's best interest, from the court's point of view, to not do his very best in the lawsuit.

Isn't this an ethical violation of either being a stockholder or a lawyer?

(sorry about the formatting/poor english, haven't had a day off in over a month and i'm in the middle of class)

its idiotic things like this that Jack does that everytime i read about it my day just gets a little better. also next time he tries to bring up something like this the whole videogame industry should sue him.

Shout box

Infophile: @Matt: Apparently Dan Aykroyd actually is involved. We don't know how yet, though, but he's apparently going to be in the movie in some way.08/02/2015 - 4:17am

Mattsworkname: I still hold that not having the origonal cast invovled in any way hurts this movie, and unless the 4 actresses in the lead roles can some how measure up to the comic timing of the origonal cast, i just don't see it being a success08/02/2015 - 12:46am

Mattsworkname: Mecha: regardless of what you think of it, GB 2 was a finanical success and for it time did well with audiances ,even if it wasnt as popular as the first08/02/2015 - 12:45am

MechaTama31: I think they're better off trying to do something different, than trying to be exactly the same and having every little difference held up as a shortcoming. Uncanny valley.08/01/2015 - 11:57pm

MechaTama31: Having the original cast didn't do much for... that pink-slimed atrocity which we must never speak of.08/01/2015 - 11:56pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: If the new ghostbusters bombs, I cant help but feel it'll be cause it removed the origonal cast and changed the formula to much08/01/2015 - 8:31pm

Andrew Eisen: Not the best look but that appears to be a PKE meter hanging from McCarthy's belt.08/01/2015 - 7:34pm

Mattsworkname: You know what game is a lot of fun? rocket league. It' s a soccer game thats actually fun to play cause your A Freaking CAR!08/01/2015 - 7:02pm

Mattsworkname: Nomad colossus did a little video about it, showing the world and what can be explored in it's current form. It's worth a look, and he uses text for commentary as not to break the immerison08/01/2015 - 5:49pm

Mattsworkname: I feel some more mobility would have made it more interesting and I feel that a larger more diverse landscape with better graphiscs would help, but as a concept, it interests me08/01/2015 - 5:48pm

Andrew Eisen: Huh. I guess I'll have to check out a Let's Play to get a sense of the game.08/01/2015 - 5:47pm

Mattsworkname: It did, I found the idea of exploring a world at it's end, exploring the abandoned city of a disappeared alien race and the planets various knooks and crannies intriqued me.08/01/2015 - 5:46pm

Andrew Eisen: Did it appeal to you? If so, what did you find appealing?08/01/2015 - 5:43pm

Mattsworkname: Its an interesting concept, but it's not gonna appeal to everyone thats for sure,08/01/2015 - 5:40pm

Andrew Eisen: That sounds horrifically boring. Doesn't sound like an interesting use of its time dilation premise either. 08/01/2015 - 5:36pm

Mattsworkname: an observer , seeing this sorta frozen world and being able to explore without any restriction other then time. no enimes, no threats, just the chance to explore08/01/2015 - 5:34pm